Thinking: Possibilities with XBOX 360

Raise your hand if you watched MTV last night at 7:30 to catch the XBOX 360 unveiling. I Tivo’d it and watched it later on. Wow. This is looking ridiculously incredible. Some quick specs go like this:

IBM PowerPC based CPU with three cores at 3.2 Ghz apiece

500 Mhz ATI graphics processor with 10MB DRAM

Detachable, upgradeable 20GB hard drives

Three USB 2.0 ports

Built-in Ethernet port

Built-in 802.11a, b, and g Wi-Fi

All games support 16:9 widescreen, 720p and 1080i resolution (and standard definition output)

48Khz 16-bit audio, 32-bit processing and over 256 audio channels

Did you catch that first line up there? 3 cores featuring 3.2ghz PowerPC processors. This sends my mind reeling. The most obvious thought is that PowerMac G5’s shouldn’t be far behind to bump to 3+ ghz range. Great! It’ll be about time. And if XBOX 360 is doing, why not the actual desktop computers?

The thought that gets me really excited is the hackable possibilities of the XBOX 360 platform. A triple core 3ghz machine for $300 or $400? Heck yes I would. People have already hacked PearPC onto a current XBOX. Why not install Tiger on a native Power PC based system such as the new XBOX 360?

Now, I understand just enough to be dangerous. I don’t know all the ins and outs when it comes to hacking hardware/saoftware like this. So there are probably a number of obstacles in the way for this to be initially possible. But there are way too many geeks out there with too much time and too many brain cells. It’ll happen. And once it does, I’m gonna have me a killer XBOX 360 Tiger…